ATTITUDE OF PARENTS TO CHILDREN
reinforced by those due to more general interference with the
child's desires, so too in the case of the parents, any ill-feelings
that they may bear towards their children as a result of
jealousy are likely to be complicated by other causes of
hostility. If it be to some extent inevitable that children should
come to regard their parents as obstacles to the full attainment
of their own desires and as unwelcome causes of interference
with their most cherished activities, parents have at least equal
reason to complain similarly of their children. The responsi-
bility, the effort, the anxiety, involved in rearing children, xhe sacrifices
diminish very considerably the time and energy available for involved in
j. ..i i • j • T parenthood
more directly personal occupations and enjoyments. To some
extent the individual inevitably sacrifices himself in becoming
a parent, in accordance with the general biological law which
Spencer has designated the antagonism between individuation
and genesis; and this sacrifice of personal comforts, pleasures,
satisfactions and ambitions does not as a rule take place without
some degree of resentment being felt against those whose
existence necessitates the sacrifice. Even where—owing to
robust health, abundant energy, ample means, state relief or
other circumstances—children demand but little sacrifice of the
major aims and occupations of life, the very considerable
difference between the points of view of children and those
of adults and the largely incompatible nature of the conditions
and activities that appeal to their respective minds tend to
make the constant presence of children, especially within the
confines of a small home, inevitably to some extent a cause of
annoyance to the parents. As Bernard Shaw1 so well points
out, children are indeed to some extent necessarily and un-
avoidably a nuisance to grown-up persons; with their ill-
regulated and impulsive energy and their disregard of the
habits and conventions to which their seniors have become
accustomed, they constitute an ever present menace to the
comfort and tranquillity of adult life—a menace from which
even the most devoted parent must sometimes wish that he
could free himself.
The mother, owing to the greater demands which children Theiriafluence
make upon her time and health and energy is perhaps that on *« mother
one of the parents to experience most keenly such hostile
1 "Parents and Children."
159